FROM every point of view - artistic, musical, theatrical and logistical - this was an ambitious undertaking, impressively realised.

Notes from Underground is a novella by Dostoyevsky in two parts: the first is a philosophical monologue on society, the individual, and free will; the second is a story of the narrator's life describing alienation and failed love.

The librettist, Pierce Wilcox, has ingeniously superimposed the two parts so that the monologue becomes an alter-ego to the story's cycle of decline, and the composer, Jack Symonds, has constructed an imaginative and texturally varied score built, like Alban Berg's Wozzeck, on classic forms that control the passage of time.

The message is counter-utopian - the "Crystal Palace" (in philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky's term) being constantly undermined by nagging negativity and the capacity for evil.

Netta Yashchin's production is gripping and earthy, capturing, with design and choreography team Charlotte Lane, Julia Young, Charles Coy and Dymphna Carew, an existential mood of angst and ennui. The result was that 90 minutes inside an insufferably hot theatre never palled.

Mitchell Riley, as the "aboveground" Man, enacted self-imposed alienation with suppressed inner fierceness and sang with penetrating clarity. Morgan Pearse, his "underground" doppelganger, circled around his daily failures like Mephistopheles, urging him on with a more rounded no less forceful tone.

As Liza, the prostitute and redemptive female character, Anna Yun created the only deeply human character, tossed on the ocean of human suffering and degradation and coping as best she can. Nicole Thomson, as the other Liza - the madam that, implicitly, the younger one will become - was brilliantly unfazed by Symonds's hugely challenging lines, and the extreme passages of highs and lows that she and Yun negotiated in the central section created a musical centre point of transcendent stasis.

The chorus of dancer/prostitutes created lithe lasciviousness with worrying depictions of femininity, while the orchestra, under Symonds's baton, realised a rhythmically demanding score with focused concentration and raw tone. It was an auspicious launch for a new company, belying the work's negative message with youthful promise.